Reader’s Comments

Issue 205 – June 6, 2012

Editor: Regarding “One-Sized Education Doesn’t Fit,” having been involved with the politics of educational reform since Ronald Reagan was my governor and then president, I know well the failure of public schools and the all but impossible effort to save America from the ramifications we are now facing after some now forty years of this failed public system. Check out my last and final effort on Amazon.com Corrupt to the Core, although the question mark is simply to get one to open the book for there is no question. I target the taxpayers of America as the abrogators of their responsibility to safeguard future generations when they enable and allow now politically controlled “pools of ignorance” to govern the schools their taxes enable. Unless the taxpayers of America understand that their locally governed schools have been co-opted by the political will of progressives, nothing will save us from where this has taken America…the uprooting of a Constitutional Republic. Taxpayers one and all must understand that it is they who are the enablers of this failing system. They will pay attention only when the facts, not lies from the system, are exposed through broad-based media coverage of failure rates and cost. Some $700 billion is annually extracted from America’s taxpayers to school, not educate, some 60 million who upon graduation test by NAEP at 80% below proficient along with the 75% who fail arm service applications. I know, it’s unbelievable and why we are in crisis. May I include your article in my next update? It’s essential and right on target. K-12 too must diversify to meet the diversity of today’s clients no longer from homogeneous neighborhoods that regardless of age brings diverse experiences into a classroom. I am grateful you are informing an equally ignorant generation of parents who too were not well prepared by this system. The blind leading the blind and we are well pass that …but one generation from tyranny. Thank you, Carolyn Carruth

Editor: “One-Sized Education Doesn’t Fit” is a great article! Let’s get the federal government out of education. Surprised to see Carolyn Carruth is interested in your piece. Her book on the subject is very informative. CC Gibb

Editor: Regarding Jeff Crouere’s “Obama Thrill Gone,” President Obama ordered the cabinet to cut $100,000,000.00 ($100 million) from the $3,500,000,000,000.00 ($3.5 trillion) federal budget. I’m so impressed by this sacrifice that I have decided to do the same thing with my personal budget. I spend about $2,000 a month on groceries, household expenses, medicine, utilities, etc., but it’s time to get out the budget cutting axe, go through my expenses, and cut back. I’m going to cut my spending at exactly the same ratio (1/35,000) of my total budget. After doing the math, it looks like instead of spending $2,000 a month, I’m going to have to cut that number by six cents. Yes, I’m going to have to get by with $1999.94, but that’s what sacrifice is all about. I’ll just have to do without some things, that are, frankly, luxuries – six cents worth. Did this President actually think no one would do the math? Please send this to everyone on your list so people understand how idiotic a $100 million cut is in a $3.5 trillion budget. Ludicrous! If one spends $ 50,000.00 per year, then the equivalent would be cutting one’s expenditures by $1.42 per annum……………. SP

Editor: Regarding Jeff Crouere’s “Obama Thrill Gone,” for a few weeks now, we have been hearing the DNC and Obama run up against private money, with the primary focus recently being Bain and Romney. Well let’s do a real comparison between GM and Bain Capital. Obama only wants you to only focus on a few companies that Bain ran but ultimately was unable to help recover from poor management. The most important one, at least in the eyes of the DNC, is the failed Steel Company. The fact that the price of steel dropped to an all time low because of cheap steel shipped in to the United States under a DNC President doesn’t matter to them, nor should it matter to you. In the free market, some win and some lose. BUT, let’s look at the GM bailout through the same lens that Obama is using to view the situation with Romney and Bain. GM was given BILLIONS of dollars more than the company is worth (now or ever in the history of the company). On top of that, after GM accepted the money from Obama’s bailout, Obama/GM STILL proceeded to close 600 dealerships across the country. Now if we say that each dealership ONLY employed 10 workers, that is 6000 employees indirectly FIRED by Obama. If we look PAST the at least 6000 employees that got FIRED by Obama for 50 billion dollars (which is 3 – 4 times what the company was worth on its best day), can you also look past the fact that the VAST MAJORITY of GM jobs are NOT EVEN in American? They are overseas! So when we look at Bain vs. GM, Romney wins. Obama loses every time. Larry McPherson

Editor: Regarding Hal Mason’s “Budget Facts Made Simple,” Americans not having large families is among the reasons for the huge deficit from social welfare programs. There aren’t enough younger folks paying in to continue to fully support older retires on Social Security and Medicare. It also partly explains the huge influx of illegal aliens who are partially filling that population gap resulting from folks not having larger families. It’s actually quite ironic that those who criticized people in the third world for having large families (which the third-worlders do/did out of necessity to have someone to take care of them in their old age), are about to find out that the third-worlders got it more right than they did. Folks in the 1st world are finding out (Europe), or are about to find out (U.S.A.), that because they had zero, one or two kids that there aren’t enough taxpayers to support them in their old age by generating sufficient tax revenues. D

Editor: Regarding Grace-Marie Turner’s “Our Least Popular Law,” when I hear a liberal spout off on how “wonderful” Obamacare is, I ask them “Have you read it?” They look at me blankly. I tell them that it has been online at thomas.gov for several months before Congress voted on it, in the 2009 bills, HR 3590. I downloaded it and read the first 600 pages before it was even voted on. If they haven’t read it for themselves, they are only parroting what someone else told them. I have an opinion – it stinks to high Heaven!!-because I know firsthand what is in it. Pat

Editor: Regarding your “Invisible Syrian Christians,” I greatly appreciate and benefit from reading about events in Syria written by knowledgeable, thoughtful, articulate and rational individuals. My own experiences there, while far less extensive or intensive, are probably more recent. Last August, a group called Suryia bilkhair (loosely translated as Syria’s OK, and clearly but not openly representing the regime) invited 60+ scholars, diplomats and journalists from about 20 countries to see for themselves what was/is going one there. I was very surprised to discover that, for reasons that I do not at all understand, I was the only one from here. (A journalist based in Beirut was the only other American.) We had no restrictions on where we went or to whom we spoke, and visited Hama in addition to meeting with the leaders of the Christian community. Setting aside the generally informative but predictable presentations made by the hosts and a few officials, neither bombastic nor overly pro-regime, much of the most useful input came from the opportunity to talk with the other visitors. The majority of them, in particular two exceptionally impressive Indians, a former ambassador and a university professor who teaches Islam and the Middle East, were in substantial agreement with the stance taken by Bashir’s spokespeople that the driving forces behind the troubles were to a large extent located outside Syria. This thesis has gained considerable outside creditability as events have unfolded, although not too many other governments appear to subscribe to it. In some cases, this is probably the result of their actual involvement or, at a minimum, their interest in having everything work out the way they would prefer. Everything that I saw, and especially what I did not see, led me to a similar conclusion. While it is obvious that riots and battles can be taking place in one part of a large city without any sights or sounds being noticed in another, the atmosphere in both Damascus and Hama was not at all indicative of major unrest, or fear, or of everything on the very edge of coming unglued. The overall situation has clearly gotten worse in the intervening months, but my efforts to inform people in the State Department of my then-impressions were not merely rejected, they were rudely mocked. In any event, our support for the removal of Bashir is solidly based on the many, beneficial, highly desirable results of the departure of the leaders of, for example, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Iraq and Libya: the prompt development and installation of Utopian Democracies. Stability, even if it involved accepting something less than fully democratic governments, was a long-standing policy of our government, in South America as well as the Arab world. Now we are being given an opportunity to judge the effects of Instability, one of the most visible being the significant loss of life and the grim fact that it may be a costly while before we obtain, well, stability. From where I sit, the new approach looks considerably less desirable. EA

Editor: Regarding your “Invisible Syrian Christians,” I am confused on all of this Syrian civil war business–I guess that’s what it is? I see all over the web, Christians and non Christian Syrians passionately supporting their President. I don’t get it, I guess. I have heard that the Al Qaida is really CIA trained killers sent in to fight the regime. I know from facebook and youtube that there is huge support for President Asaad, Christians as well as Muslims. This is a Nation like any other with different faiths and beliefs. The Syrians love their country greatly. This is evident. Anyway, God is in charge and He sees all and loves all. He loved the Syrians when He walked this earth and He does still today. Thank you, Ginger Creager

Editor: Thanks for Craig Shirley’s “Reagan’s Roots.” I loved reading his books on Reagan’s 1976 and 1980 campaigns. Keep ‘em coming! His writing is a joy and a pleasure to read. Thanks for all his good work. Emmy